


Whatever it Takes

by theLiterator



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Genre: First Meetings, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 12:52:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8286551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: Bruce Wayne has stalked Oliver Queen across two continents, and he's not going to waste this chance to recruit him.It does not at all go the way he wants it to.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



The party isn’t _real_ , is the thing.

Bruce surveys the wasteland of the over-dressed Gotham elite and smiles around at them, working at making the expression as bland and decadent as everyone else’s, looking for the person who’d drawn this entire charade down upon them and, at first, not spotting him.

He takes a long sip of his champagne and considers whether he ought to slow down, keep himself just sober enough to be alert, when someone brushes up against his back and he whirls, ready either for danger or a drunken ingenue, and finds himself eye-to-eye with the great Oliver Queen.

“Hey there, partner,” is the greeting, over a nearly identical glass of champagne and with just enough sarcasm to ring false.

Bruce raises his eyebrow and his glass, letting his smile drop for just a moment, wondering if Queen really is as good as rumors suggest. “We aren’t partners,” Bruce said, weighing the words. “Though, I’m open to that changing.”

Oliver laughs, and it rings out a little hollow, a little false, but that isn’t exactly remarkable given the company in the ballroom, the five-thousand dollar plates and the jewels and the debauchery around them. “Are you?” he asks, leaning in, close enough that Bruce can identify his cologne, too-heavy and a little sour over sweat, like maybe Oliver is too-warm in the ballroom.

Like maybe he’d only had time for a cursory shower after a workout that none here would ever commit to.

Bruce feels the lines of his mouth flatten out and he jerks his head in a serious affirmative before regaining his smile and leaning in. “Let’s just say that I’m entertaining a _serious_ merger that I’d like to let you in on.”

Oliver’s eyebrows creep up in response, but his expression doesn’t shift one iota despite all the hints Bruce is allowing. Ignorance, or intentional misunderstanding? Either option is still unhelpful to his goals; he almost misses the directness of his dealings with Arthur. Being pinned against a wall by a near superhuman is less exhausting than these political acting games.

The crowd shifts and eddies around them, and a woman catches Bruce’s eye and starts to move towards them, her champagne flute tipping dangerously in her lax grip, and Oliver moves at the same time as Bruce, leaning in, heads tilted so they’re nearly touching, bodies curling closer, intimate.

“I really did need to speak with you,” Bruce says in the bubble they’d created, letting his eyelids lower and slanting his head so he would appear just slightly shorter than Oliver Queen. It might not be a game he often enjoyed, but he did know how to play this.

“And my secretary told you—”

“No meetings until July, yes, she said. Many times. Twice just yesterday—along with a copy of your itinerary for this visit to Metropolis. What do you tell her when she asks why you’re avoiding Bruce Wayne?”

Oliver licks his lips, and the people around them start edging away, too close to something akin to a public display for their comfort, even if they’re only subconsciously aware of the signals.

People know when to move away, when to close in— herd instinct. Bruce stills, waiting for Oliver to come up with an answer, one way or another.

“That he’s an arrogant ass with no sense of money?” Oliver answers, with a too-sharp smile and then a low laugh, holding his gaze without even glancing away. “Do your secretaries ask when you give orders?”

“Of course they do,” Bruce replies quickly, smiling back, equally sharp. He lets his breath catch a little, draws back just enough for it too look like Oliver’s said something just a bit too forward, a bit too alpha-male for his sensibilities (and isn’t that an interesting thought, though he may be enjoying pretending to be hunted instead of hunter for once). “I hire _people_ , not underlings.”

“Yes,” Oliver says. “That was all over the news, wasn’t it?”

It’s too close to home, and he wants to flinch for real this time, but he can’t risk it, can’t risk someone coming over to ‘save’ him from Oliver Queen, can’t risk losing this one minuscule opportunity to make his case.

“Well, that answers that then,” Bruce says instead of reacting— reacting gets you killed. He’s told enough people that over the years that at some point he has to believe it himself. Act with forethought, consideration, and— “You _do_ watch the news. I’d wondered about that.”

“Well I have to keep tabs on,” a small pause, a slight lean in to match the distance Bruce’d drawn back, “prospective partners. All your talk about mergers, but you’ve never spoken to me before, have you? Lot of years of silence.”

“Recent events have made me consider a more multi-lateral approach to my dealings,” Bruce replies, reaching to catch Oliver’s hand, fixing his cufflink and letting his fingers linger on the skin of his hand, brushing his thumb over the pressure point on his wrist. Oliver shivered minutely and tensed, but he didn’t draw away.

“Multi-lateral? And your prior preference for… new properties… wasn’t satisfactory?”

Bruce draws back entirely at that, and he knows there was too much chill in his voice, too much distance between them to enforce the charade, but he can’t stop it, stop _reacting_ with, “Never speak of that. _Never_.”

Oliver _laughs_ , and Bruce can’t give in to the desire to whirl, to hurt _something_ , so he half turns to set his champagne flute on a table, and, that done, to head for one of the french doors leading to the smoking deck.

He re-calculates-- he should have sent Diana for this one, but for whatever reason he’d thought Oliver Queen would be most amenable to his approach. The only thing this interaction had done for them was establish that Oliver Queen knew his identity as Batman. He hadn’t even been able to establish with complete certainty that Queen was the _Green Arrow_ , and…

_Diana would have been better._

“Wayne!”

Bruce ignores the voice, continues past the old men shivering with their cigarettes, ignores the tiny part of his brain that points out that if his desire was to keep from losing control, the _smoking deck_ was a really stupid place to go.

He’s well into a maze of expensive topiaries by the time Oliver gets a hand on him, and Bruce grabs his wrist as he turns, shoving him into the wall of hedges between them and the rest of the party.

“That was uncalled for,” Oliver says, staring at him with wide eyes and none of the facade of earlier. A glass shatters, somewhere, and people laugh about it, before Oliver continues. “I shouldn’t have said that. But— what do you even _want_?”

“None of us should do this alone,” Bruce says. He has a speech. It’s a good speech, Alfred says, and it had worked, more or less, on Barry Allen; although he’d forgotten parts of what he was meant to say then too.

Speeches were for Bruce Wayne. Batman had other strengths, and this? This was entirely about Batman.

“Yeah? I do well enough on my own, I think,” Oliver replies, chin up and defensive. Bruce realizes he’s still gripping Oliver’s wrist in his hand, and he relaxes his fingers so the marks won’t be too bad come morning, but doesn’t release him.

“Yeah? So when there was a monster in my bay, you were…?”

“I was in Boca Raton. Six— no, _seven_ people will attest to that. Didn’t you decide that was all Luthor’s fault, anyway? I seem to recall acquiring one of his factories in China the week after the incident for dead cheap. Seems like a conflict of interest, really.”

Bruce shakes his head, once, and then drops Oliver’s hand. “Nevermind,” he says.

“Nevermind?” Oliver demands, incredulous. “ _Nevermind_? You stalk me across two continents, you practically take my clothes off in front of half of Metropolis, you _bruise me_ , and that’s _it?_ ”

“Obviously this was a mistake,” Bruce replies, frozen with the warring desires to leave and to never give up on anything. “I’ll give you my card, you can…”

“Think about it?” Oliver says, smirking again, and Bruce wants to put more space between them. There’s a certain predatory quality to Oliver’s expression that is distinctly familiar, and… this was not his intention in coming here.

Not at all.

He lets Oliver put a hand on his shoulder before reacting; grabbing his wrist again and using brute strength to flip him into the next row of hedgegrow.

Oliver doesn’t let him go, drags Bruce with him, which is both expected and _not_ , and Bruce struggles for a full second to regain his footing. Oliver’s back on even ground as well, grinning harder, and Bruce feels his own mouth stretch into a snarl. Most people would back down if he turned that expression on them; Oliver does not.

“That it? I expected a little bit _more_ from you, I’m gonna be honest here.”

“You’re gonna have to define ‘more’, here, Queen,” Bruce replies, and he can’t help how much the snarl infects his voice. He always feels a little bit _less_ than real at these parties, but this, with Oliver? This has no relation to the things that had been happening in that ballroom. The growl, that’s him.

Oliver rushes him, and Bruce squares his stance, holds his ground, and if, three weeks ago, he’d have guessed he’d be fighting the Green Arrow, he would have said they’d be doing it from rooftops, stealth and quick jabs and trickshots, not _this_ , but then, three weeks ago he’d been against this entire idea, and Alfred had been feeding him nothing but cucumber sandwiches in retaliation.

A lot can change in three weeks— perspectives.

Worlds.

Bruce shifts his grip and gets Oliver on the ground, the grass damp under his knee, wicking into the fabric, and Oliver huffs out a laugh that has Bruce shifting the armlock in retaliation.

Bespoke tailoring rips. The sounds of the party are very far away.

“Best two out of three, _Batman_?” Oliver whispers, and he’s _enjoying_ this, which is enough to highlight the absurdity of the moment.

“Not on your life, _Arrow_ ,” Bruce growls, pressing a little harder before letting go. He wants to smile, a little. The entire situation would be funny, were it happening to anyone but him.

He starts to stand up, peering at his shoulder to see if it was his suit that had ripped, and Oliver snakes his leg out from under him, rolling them until he is on top, face to face with Bruce.

“Well, one thing’s sure— there’s no way in hell I’m letting you make a promise like that without delivering.”

“What prom—” Bruce tries to ask, But Oliver presses a hand against his throat and kisses him, and Bruce… well. Bruce had definitely meant to make this sort of impression, back in the ballroom.

He kisses back, lets Oliver control everything from angle and force to when they bring hands into it, tongues, and once Bruce is certain Oliver is distracted, he flips them back around and pins him with a knee to the chest.

Oliver laughs again, and Bruce wonders, briefly, what it would take for him to take something seriously, and he takes off his belt under Oliver’s very appreciative gaze.

He rearranges them, kisses Oliver again, harder this time, because they aren’t billionaires playing at salaciousness, they’re vigilantes lining up for a turf war, and once Oliver sighs, relaxed again, Bruce brings his hand with the belt up to loop it around Oliver’s wrists. Oliver jerks back though, bites Bruce’s lip, and manages to get the belt wrapped around his wrist and Oliver’s both, the slack end in his own grip and one hand free for each of them.

“Not falling for the same trick twice, princess,” Oliver says, and then he reaches between them with that free hand. Bruce’s belt is helpfully otherwise occupied, so the only thing that stands in Oliver’s way is the inadequate barrier of a button easily flicked through its matching hole, and a zipper that parts on its own with the pressure of a hand pushing into the slacks.

Bruce is harder than he would like, than he _should be_ with nothing to blame for it but Oliver Queen, grinning like an idiot on the grass, with all the reasons in the world he should _not_ be enjoying himself here and now.

“Are we really doing this?” Bruce asks. The growl feels rough, wrong but still more comfortable than the voice Bruce Wayne might use on a woman he had in the gardens, laid out and bound to him and _wanton_.

“Yeah,” Oliver says. “Superhero club? Sounds great!”

Bruce is torn between kissing him quiet and correcting him, but Oliver drags his palm along Bruce’s cock and Bruce misses his lips and Oliver’s smirk brushes the corner of his mouth.

“Does it feel like we’re really doing this?” Oliver asks, and his voice has dropped an octave, and Bruce isn’t sure if that makes him want to punch him again or not.

Instead, he drags their joined hands up next to Oliver’s head and uses that hand to brace himself up so he can get at Oliver’s belt and into _his_ slacks, and, oh-- it was _Oliver’s_ suit that had ripped, which pleases him a little, sends a spark of smug satisfaction into his chest.

“Didn’t know you went for this sort of thing,” Bruce says, trying again, and words aren’t really his strong suit, not like _this_ , and Oliver bites his bottom lip, not laughing again, thank God, but still with that current of amusement.

“What can I say? Even Oliver Queen is captive to that old money allure.”

Bruce tries to growl at him to shut up and to bite his lip simultaneously, and Oliver says something else into their joined mouths, and wraps his hand around Bruce, and Bruce takes a second to revel in the sensation before curling his hand around Oliver in return.

He likes things tight and fast and just this side of painful, and he hopes that’s what Oliver was looking forward to, because he’s not doing this as _Bruce Wayne_ , so he doesn’t have to worry about keeping his reputation intact, and there’s no room for finesse anyways, just the sharp warmth of physical pleasure, and the triumph he feels when Oliver stops trying to talk into the kiss.

He’s on the edge, rocking hips and hand erratically, when Oliver flips them, and Bruce is a little surprised that _that_ pushes him over.

He groans rough and heavy, caught in the moment, in the shock of spit slick lips dragging against his own, the short, soft gasping little _whines_ that are coming from Oliver’s throat, the world dull and throbbing and far away, and it’s only once he spills over the edge that Oliver’s body goes tense and bows up, grinding into him and drawing away all at once, and Bruce thinks, with a quiet sort of satisfaction, that he _beat_ him.

Oliver lays on his chest, heavy and breathing hard, for far too long, and Bruce knows there’s going to be no mistaking what happened in this garden once they go back inside, but for once…

It doesn’t matter.

He shuts his eyes, and Oliver ruins the moment by reaching up to loosen the belt around their wrists.

“Alright, old man,” Oliver says. “I think that’s one apiece, unless you’re willing to give me half a point for the belt thing.”

“We’re the same age,” Bruce replies, eyes still shut. “And it’s my belt.”

“So, I assume you have my number?” Oliver asks.

Bruce sits up, stares at him as he carefully sorts out his clothes, even though his slacks are torn and his jacket has grass stains on it.

Bruce knows he doesn’t look much better.

“I did stalk you across two continents,” Bruce says mildly.

“Well. I look forward to our rematch,” Oliver says, and turns before Bruce can answer, laughing again, and Bruce lays back down and stares at the yellow glow of the city skyline and doesn’t curse, aloud or under his breath.

Diana, of course, will mock him for several _years_ about this, he’s certain.


End file.
